Professor Arun Majumdar, head of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence National Berkeley Laboratory, recently gave a talk about the crucial need for buidings that think green. As we all know, demand for energy is increasing and renewable sources can’t keep up. Climate change happened much faster than the ICPP had predicted, and we’re now leaving an enormous carbon deficit for our children to deal with. In his presentation, Dr. Majumdar emphasized that “the most important challenge of our time is how we can turn this around without a drastic change in lifestyle.”

One of the biggest differences we can make is to make our buildings efficient. Buildings are the biggest energy hogs, gobbling up 55% of all natural gas and 71 % of the nation’s electricity. And this isn’t all in the commercial sector, as Dr. Majumdar points out; the usage is split 50/50 between commercial and residential buildings.

Knowing this data begs a serious question: How do we reduce energy consumption in our buildings? The obvious answer is through energy efficiency. Retrofitting and optimizing all old and new buildings can save enough energy to shut down half the coal power plants in the country. But how do we make such deep energy cuts and implement them widely, you ask? Well, that’s the real conundrum. Although we’ve made some progress inventing new technologies, we need more innovation now in the energy sector than ever. In his presentation, Dr. Majumdar outlined three elements that are required to make these deep energy cuts:

Policy Change

Presently, most buildings are designed for comfort and looks, not energy performance. If we are really going to drastically decrease CO2 levels, we need to have building standards based on energy performance, not design performance.

Innovation

Can you imagine your home’s thermal envelope communicating with your HVAC system? Or your HVAC system capturing wasted heated from your appliances and storing it for future heating use? This type of communicating will be essential to eliminating energy waste. But this “brain behind the building” has not yet been invented. We need innovation that will create the system of systems that will allow all the buildings’ components to talk to each other. Dr. Majumdar equated this with needing a “Linux for buildings”. By focusing on an integrated whole building approach, we can design our built environment to be carbon neutral.

Market Pull

The only way for change in the marketplace is to create financial incentives and disincentives that will encourage businesses to accept and implement new innovations.

The video below is the September 22, 2008 presentation of Dr. Majumdar discussing how scientists are creating a new generation of net-zero energy, carbon-neutral buildings.